Nestyn, Saturday night. Feel like an outcast. In 2003, 500 people watched me switch on the winterval lights (theme: Glad Tidings from Iraq). This year, 20 turned up, including my agent and a couple of tramps. By the time I'd said a few words about Christmas in Afghanistan they'd gone too, to drink prosecco at Pippa Rowe-Dent's Nestyn's Got Talent fundraiser in the town hall. She dedicated Life Is A Cabaret – complete with suspenders – to "our brave boys".

But maybe I'm lucky. The Times says that if Swaffham OKs Truss, Cameron wants Belle de Jour to run against David Miliband. In the Tory slapper stakes, Rowe-Dent is an amateur. What happens when they find out she's never been on the game? But everything is still my fault, Diane says, in usual blame-the-victim style, for not coming up with more eye-catching initiatives. I point out that the Gazette has already run two leaders supporting my stand for a cashpoint nearer the bus station. "Forget politics," she says, shoving the Mail in my face. "Why can't you be more like Keith Vaz?" Have those words ever been spoken before?

Sunday, we run through the options. There's Save Modern Warfare 2 from Vaz, but that's already gone to Siôn Simon and Tom Watson, clever buggers. Anti-bullying? Diane says everyone does that. Cyber-bullying? Also taken. Greedy little Clegg's bagged homophobic bullying. So I have a brainwave: save British bullying! Diane says Balls would smash my face in.

"I think you should apologise," she says, finally. Apologise for what? For not being Keith Vaz? She just does her annoying lightbulb gesture, and tears something out of the paper. It's harder than I thought, finding something I can't be blamed for, but by early Monday, the press release is ready: "Scuttle to apologise to Stephen Fry for historic act of injustice."

Within 10 minutes, the Mail's on. "I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering inflicted on Fry," I tell the reporter. "Let us resolve that such a tragedy never happens again, and that this apology becomes a turning point in our nation's story."